Monday, July 3, 2006

Flag-waving

Clearly, this was simply an all-too-typical Republican tactic timed first for Independence Day and then for the forthcoming midterm elections. It offered red meat for the conservative base to mitigate the White House's and Republican Senate's rare reasonableness on immigration. It was designed to force Democrats to go on record against the flag, so that attack ads can be drawn up.

So, what did the Democrats do? What do Democrats always do anymore? They tried to finesse their beliefs with incremental Republicanism.

In which I fix an overlooked speaker in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette's coverage of the observance of the 60th anniversary of Central High School desegregation

Diane Ravitch, a powerful voice against the billionaires trying to replace an egalitarian public education system with a fractured system of winners and losers segregated by race and income in private or privately operated schools, is giving a shoutout to Barclay Key of Little Rock for his review of Little Rock 60 years after the school crisis.